When the Leaf Spoke

What a crushed leaf reveals about time and us

When I stepped onto a dry leaf on the pavement, 

it did not protest. 

It did not plead, did not cry 

for one more season at least.

It simply yielded —

 a soft, brittle, crunching soundunder my feet,

like a sentence ending in gibberish

without explanation.

Once, it had held sunlight — chlorophyll?

in its green palms.

Once, rain had trusted it to hold its drops,

Birds once rested on its living edge.

Now it lay where paths cross,

where no one looks down

long enough

to remember origins.

The sound it made 

was not of breaking alone, 

but of time 

finishing its work —  

quietly, 

without apology.

Are we not the same?

Carrying summers in our veins,

dreams still warmfrom yesterday’s light,

until one ordinary step — 

a moment, a word, a year — 

passes over us.

We call it loss.

We call it ending.

But the earth calls it

return.

And somewhere,

beneath the crushed hush of the leaf,

the soil listens — 

already preparing

another beginning.

That is When the Leaf Spoke.

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